I do wonder if the police are aware of being filmed?If so, they are being very laidback about it.

Well, from their POV (and that of the current prefectural and national government), they're doing absolutely nothing wrong, or even the least bit quirky.

Who's POV is that? Who are not being quirky?

1) The police, and 2) the police. In other words, because the police are not doing anything that is not officially and publicly sanctioned by their superiors (and even supported by the populace at large), they have nothing to fear from being videotaped, if they notice that the gaijin was filming. It's basically no different than when tourists take pictures/videotape the cops standing guard with their quarterstaves.

Last edited by Shirasagi on Fri 01.11.2008 11:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

Adriano wrote:ban this ファック野郎 ASAP pleaseI hate people who don´t have friends, and make mess around foruns just to be "noticed" by the somebody ò_ó SOLITUDE..いらないさあ ららら〜♪

sorry Tony様just wanted to practice vocabulary from Kill Bill

どこの人物って、it´s like a slang, always used in chats, like "どこすみ？".. the japanese people asks you like this way 特に if they know you are gaijin, and chating so far away, so they asks using this sentence like "where hell are you from?"

yeah, that doesn't seem to be anywhere near 'almost arrested'. 'almost arrested' is a cop's flashlight in your eyes at 3 am when you're squatting in an abandoned building and you end up on the ground with your hands behind your head and then handcuffed... or when you sitting with your droogs outside a market and a van drives up and half-a-dozen MIB dudes jump out with guns in hand and yell "get on the ground NOW!!"... that's 'almost arrested'...

I'm kind of curious about the circumstances around this video. If the cops were randomly stopping foreigners just to check ID's, that would be really annoying (especially if you were running late for a meeting! How horribly irritating!). But I wouldn't be surprised if something more happened before the video started rolling.

When I was moving to my current house, I rented a car and parked it in front of my old apartment building so I could load up some of my stuff. The road was kind of narrow, but normal-sized cars could pass. When I came down after being away for about 15 minutes, there was a large-sized van stopped behind the car because he couldn't get through (and it was a one-way street) with another one or two cars waiting behind the van. There was also a cop frantically trying to find the owner of the car to move it.

The cop asked for me to move the car for them, which I did (one of the other drivers stopped as he passed to scold the cop for letting something like this happen) and then the cop asked me for my identification and drivers license and such. He warned me that I shouldn't park there on such a narrow street. He also wrote down all my info and (probably) confirmed its validity.

However, I didn't get a ticket or anything. I was trying to think of why he needed all my info if he wasn't going to give me a ticket, and I figured maybe he had to validate his time out on patrol--maybe it's police procedure to document every incident they get involved with to prove they weren't just taking a nap or something. If he had been in the middle of patrol, he would have gotten back 20 minutes late because of me, and if he had been specifically called by one of the drivers it would only make sense for him to write a report.

But if you think about it, in the states when you get pulled over for a minor thing that only requires a warning ("your license plate light just burned out" etc.), the cops always ask for your license and registration and check on it anyway. I think it's just standard procedure any time you have someone stopped to increase the chances of randomly finding a stolen car or something.

So maybe this guy did something and the cops had to come use their time to help him out and then just checked his info as standard procedure before letting him go on his way?

So maybe this guy did something and the cops had to come use their time to help him out and then just checked his info as standard procedure before letting him go on his way?

Probably so. I remember when I was in the Navy. They said that if you went AWOL, no one would hunt you down. But if you ever got stopped for anything in the rest of your life, then when they checked your identification they would arrest you and deliver you back to the military.

It's interesting, a few months ago when I was stopped for having expired something or other, the cop actually brought out a computer printout of the ticket. Apparently, the cars in my area now have sattelight links not just for the ID check, but for the entire process now. So they ran the check and printed out the ticket automatically, kinda neat. I gushed over the progress of technology.

I then asked him if he really needed to give me a ticket for such a little thing, that he knows I'll just have corrected before my court date. But he insisted. So naturally, I showed up with my new inspection sticker to court and the Judge waived my ticket.

I wish it were something so benign, but I doubt it. Aichi Prefecture, and especially Nagoya, has one of the highest crime rates in Japan, and many believe it's linked to the influx of Brazillians brought in to work for the auto companies. I imagine in this case they were just doing a random check. If his visa was expired, there'd be that. Since it wasn't, they just took his name and address, so they can check it against incidents they have on file, or that come up in the future. Profiling at its worst, really. Distasteful as it is, though, it's not "almost arrested" unless the guy had actually done something he expected the cops to arrest him for, but somehow was able to get away with just having his info copied down.

I didn't watch the video, but I would feel sorrier for the guy if there weren't so many illegal aliens in Japan as to make these checks necessary.

I've met at least 3 people with no Visa in the last year in Nagoya. They all were rather proud of their no-visa status. At least except for one guy who had gotten ill and couldn't get medicare because he wasn't registered... :/

Shirasagi wrote:Aichi Prefecture, and especially Nagoya, has one of the highest crime rates in Japan, and many believe it's linked to the influx of Brazillians brought in to work for the auto companies